HTC Europe Co Ltd. - Tax Position Statement
Overview of Business
HTC Europe Co Ltd. (“HTC Europe”) provides sales and marketing support services to HTC Corporation (“HTC Corp”), its ultimate parent company located in at Taiwan. The sales and marketing support includes central procurement, after sales support services and acts as the European Headquarters.
HTC Europe’s Approach to Tax Governance
HTC Europe’s risk management and tax strategy is centrally approved by the Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”) of HTC Corp., who is a Director of HTC Europe. The CFO, supported by Vice President of Accounting and Tax, have the overall responsibility for the tax governance, risk management and decisions taken related to the tax affairs of the HTC Group of Companies, including publication of the tax strategy document.
The Finance Director of HTC Europe will be responsible for managing HTC Europe’s UK tax compliance and will provide regular reports to the Vice President of Accounting and Tax on the status of HTC Europe’s tax compliance and any identified tax risk. The day to day management of transactions are maintained by the accounting staff but supervised and reviewed by the Finance Director, and supported by external tax advisors where the tax position may be unclear. As part of the strategy to manage tax risk, HTC Europe’s corporation tax returns are prepared by professional tax advisors and reviewed by HTC Europe’s Finance Director and approved by the Vice President of Accounting and Tax in HTC Corp before submission.
HTC Europe’s Relationship with HMRC
HTC Europe has always been cooperative with HMRC, maintaining an open and transparent form of communication with HMRC. HTC Europe’s goal is to respond to HMRC’s queries in a cooperative and timely manner, whilst taking care to ensure the tax returns are filed accurately. HTC Europe will also seek advance clearance from HMRC where necessary in order to meet the company’s objective of being a low tax risk business.
HTC Europe’s Approach to Tax Planning
HTC Europe adopts a centralised decision-making process whereby tax policies adopted by the company and its subsidiaries are determined by HTC Corp. In particular, HTC Europe adopts the group wide tax policy of ensuring inter-company transactions are undertaken on an arm’s length basis, and comply with UK tax laws. HTC Europe engages professional advisors to manage and advise on its UK tax risk when undertaking commercial transactions.
The level of risk in relation to UK taxation HTC Europe is prepared to accept
HTC Europe has a low tolerance of tax risk and does not engage in transactions that are led by tax planning or contrary to UK tax law.
Summary
HTC Europe is committed to working with HMRC to have an open and transparent relationship with the objective of paying the correct amount of tax to HMRC.
HTC Europe Co. Ltd publishes this Tax Position Statement in accordance with the requirements of the United Kingdom (“UK”) Finance Act of 2016 (“the Act”) - Schedule 19 paragraph 22(2) in effect for year ends on 31st December 2019. It will be accessible at
http://www.htc.com/uk/tax-position-statement.
This statement will be reviewed and updated annually. It was last approved on 27th September 2019.
